In the past, before the upgrades and the downtime, reporting things in the blogs was a complicated mess of PMing BlogAlert, linking the content, describing the broken rules, and hoping someone read the BlogAlert account in a timely manner.

NO MORE!

The "REPORT" buttons on comments and entries DO WORK. Before the downtine, they did not. Now they do! Hurray!

So, in short, if you have something to report, click that button, describe the offense, and a blog staff member will receive the report and an automatic link the the offending content. (Please do not use this to report signatures)

This is much easier on us, on you, the general populace, and also on kittens everywhere.

Recent Entries

So the website has returned! Though I do not frequent this site very much, I am glad that something that was once a big part of my life is still kicking. I thought it was to be gone forever. Huzzah, I say! Let this site carry on to the distant mists of time.

As a minute life update: my family is moving by the end of this month, recently tried sake for the first time, and I bought my first sword today. I will have you know it was nothing of weebish nature, rather it was a Roman Imperial Spathion. Stay thine katanas, otakus of the occident, I shall abide by hellene steel!

So I've been up to a lot lately. Off and on for the past few years I've been taking a part time/continuing studies program for learning how to make graphic novels, but this fall they announced they were transferring over to a full-time year long intensive graphic novel program. Given how much additional content was being added, how much the courses have developed (my first classes way back were the very first year the continuing studies program began), and how long it'd been since i had taken some of the first courses, I decided to enroll in the full time program from the beginning.

It started about a week and a half ago, and it's been a blast! I'm rather enjoying the program so far. A lot of things are familiar, but I'm also learning a lot of new things already. I've even ran into an old friend of mine who's also taking the full-time program as well

Part of the program requires that I have a Wacom Cintiq tablet, one of the top of the line ones where the drawing surface has a screen to see directly where you're drawing. The Intuos pro I have doesn't have a screen built in, so I ended up getting the Cintiq 22HD. This kinda worked out nicely as I was already saving up to someday get one, since I was rather disappointed with the Intuos and needed to upgrade to 'professional' hardware at some point anyways. Better sooner then later, I guess? I've only been using it for a few days, but it's feeling great so far. I think I'm going to get used to it quickly!

In any case, once the program's finished, I'll be moving back to Ontario, likely to take some further courses to bring my actual artistic skill up to a professional level, if it isn't by the time I've completed the Graphic Novel program. I may also end up taking courses in commercial illustration to further broaden my skill-set and open up more career opportunities, but that'll likely be further down the line. Who knows, maybe some day I may end up actually being a concept artist after all!

(For those of you who don't know, I initially came out to Vancouver looking to become one before those dreams were utterly crushed for a variety of reasons, but I wont go into that here.)

As for an update on my comic series, a big part of why I haven't been making them like I used to is that I've been holding off, feeling I should wait until I've learned all I could from the graphic novel programs, to make them as best as they can be. I've come to the decision though that rather then waiting until my art is as best as it can be, I really ought to be using them as practice, to help me improve quicker and apply what I'm learning to something I'm actually doing, not to mention giving you guys more stuff to look at!. So more comics in the near future, hopefully! We'll see how much homework kicks my butt :p

Recent Entries

I still visit here occasionally, but I've mostly been busy with stuff like Star Trek Online, Warframe and watching OutsideXbox, Outside Xtra, Eurogamer and Dicebreaker.

Speaking of which, I went to EGX Rezzed in London in April to meet a bunch of new friends, and watched livestreams of the above, and went to meet and greets with them (aside from Dicebreaker, which didn't exist yet).

Recent Entries

So first of all I'm real happy that this old site is back online. BZPower has always been a special place for me and Brickfair has kind of renewed my interest in the Bionicle community, so I'm glad to have it back, and I think the new forum software will eventually turn out to be better than what we were using, even if there are some kinks to work out still.

Anyway that Brickfair was one of the greatest experiences I've had in a long time. It felt so good to be totally immersed in such a great community for a few days. I've been trying to make an effort to be more social in general since the events of my last entry, and realizing that there's something like this where I can really connect with like-minded people greatly lifted my spirits. Special shout out to my Team Farm Animals! There were a lot of great mocs on display too, and even my one humble creation I decided to bring last minute seemed to get a pretty good response.

This totally made up for missing last year's event. In a way, it felt nice to have such a big thing to point to as being better in my life this year compared to last, particularly something that I didn't share with my ex. (See last entry.) But hopefully I won't be missing any more!

What probably stood out the most to me were the events of the final night. There was just a massive turnout for the annual dinner, after which we all hung around in the parking lot, no one wanting to leave too soon. But leave we eventually had to, with me going back with a few to play Jackbox back at the hotel as we had done almost every night. And honestly, there was just such a massive Bionicle presence in general. There were so many tables and they were so full a few people moved their mocs to other appropriate sections, and there were several seminars and panels related to Bionicle. The majority I think. It really showed me how big this community still is, even we're a bit fractured.

And I'm glad I had such a great community experience at this time, because shortly after I got back home, I lost most of my friends, including a few of my longest time friends since middle school, to what is essentially a political dispute. I won't go into details here, but obviously it upset greatly to have so many people I had been close to suddenly decide they want nothing to do with me. If it had happened at a lower point in my life, my spirit might have been broken completely. So thank you

Since then, I've gone back to college. I go out and play Pathfinder on Thursdays and Magic: The Gathering on Fridays. I spend a lot of time on my studies, but I have been exploring that wider Bionicle community that I was alerted to, mainly in the form of listening to various YouTube videos in the background while I play Hearthstone. I did watch Biocraft as I was told about at Brickfair and really enjoyed it too!

Anyway, that's a short update on the last little bit with what's been going on with me. I'm glad to be back on here; let's keep the good times rolling.

Hey, folks. Since BZP is back online now, I figured I pop in and give a general life update for those interested (Probably no one...).

And boy, it has been awhile since I wrote an entry. I didn't realized that I kind of drop off the face of BZP since 2018 onward. XD

So where to begin? Well, not a whole lot has changed for me in past two years... Still working at the same job for past nine years and still living with my folks (Yeah, not a great look for a 27 year old... I do pay them rent at least. But yeah, it is something that I needed to work on. XD).

So yeah, not much to share on those fronts, so I won't bored you with that.

Have I done much LEGO building in the past two years? I mean LEGO sets wise, yeah, I have build an occasion set here and there (I actually have a bit of backlog of sets that I should build at some point. Like I still have Lord of Rings sets from way back still boxed and on a self near me. XD).

I hadn't brought anything recently though or done much MOCing (Mind you, that's not too surprising as I have never been that great at MOCing to begin with). So not much share on LEGO front either.

Thoughts on Bionicle Gen 3 rumors sparked by Christian Faber (that were in news here awhile back)? Well, I am not against LEGO doing another attempt at the theme if they want, especially since I did like the sets from Gen 2.

Moving on from that, I guess I will talk about gaming next. I am going organize this in a list format since that feels like best way of doing this (Note: Not in any particular order)...

- I finished the story for Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (on PS3) finally. I had a pretty good time with it, although I do regret having so much gaps between playing it since I definitely didn't remember a lot of stuff. Oh, and I am not a big fan of familiar combat in it. People praised that element a lot and I really don't get it (Personally I think Pokemon combat style is much better than it). Also the last bit of game felt really tack on to me (Really it felt like it could work better if it had been flesh out more in a direct sequel). Hm... I might go back to do trophies at late point (Basically if I clear my PS3 backlog out).

- I managed to get all trophies in Journey (PS3). I must say I was surprised there are people still playing it online on PS3 after it being out for like 6 years (I did this in 2018, unless I am remembering wrong.).

- I got all trophies in Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (PS3). The game still tugs at my heartstrings after all these years.

- I played LittleBIGPlanet 1 (PS3) until I got stuck in the Bunker. I recall finding some of the controls rather annoying and not being a fan of respawn system. It is hard to say if I will go back to it anytime soon.

- I played Ico (PS3), which was definitely more my speed than LittleBIGPlanet 1. The last thing I recall doing it was finding a secret room that gave me a weapon. I didn't finish it since KH3 was on the way to being released at the time, so I took a break from it. I definitely will be going back to this eventually.

- I briefly play Marvel's Spider-Man on my PS4 to test it to make sure it worked. The only thing I did outside of first mission was collect all map points and schoolbags. XD I really wanted to play more of it, but sadly I loan it to my brother awhile back.

- I played KH 0.2 and watched Back Cover in prep for KH3. I really enjoyed KH 0.2. I wish it could been a full game rather than tech demo for KH3. Oh, and I didn't replay KH3D since I just didn't have time since I did this so close to KH3. It is on my to do list to replay eventually.

- I played KH3. I honestly play this game non-stop when it came out. I was that excited for it and I am glad I brought it. While it was far from perfect (I definitely have my complains on stuff), I enjoyed it and I look forward to DLC this winter. Oh, and I didn't get all trophies (I did get all Hidden Mickeys though). I might go back and do them eventually.

- On Nintendo Switch's NES app, I have finished Super Mario Bros 3 and I am currently working my way through Metroid 1. I am really bad at Metroid 1. XD

- I have 100% non-DLC story mode in Splatoon 2. I also finished Octo Expansion in prep for last Splatfest (My Team, Order, sadly lost Splatfest). It is going be awhile before I 100% Octo Expansion because man, it is difficult.

- And lastly, I am currently working my way through Paper Mario 1 for first time. At the moment, I am on Chapter 5 and I will be continuing that this weekend.

Alright, that's basically a summary of what I been up to gaming wise. I probably miss some stuff, but this list is long enough as it is, so I'll end it there.

The only other thing that I can think to talk about is that I recently went on my first plane trip as I went to Seattle for PAX West last week. It was pretty fun trip. I am glad that I decided to tag-along with my sister for it. I am also not as afraid of planes anymore, so that opens the door at least to consider doing other trips like this in the future (Although planes are pretty cramped, so definitely not doing trips longer than 5 hours.).

My biggest highlight from PAX West was getting to play FF7 Remake demo (I was really lucky on Monday... Also Monday was like the best day. It was so much less intense compared to other days). It was great and I can't wait to play it next year. *hype*

*look at how long the entry is* Alright, I think I rambled enough here. If you like to hear more about my Seattle trip, let me know and I'll take time to write up a summary on the trip for here with some pictures for ya. But anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this rambling entry about my life.

Recent Entries

I’ve made no secret my anticipation for Death Stranding, the latest project from Hideo Kojima, the gaming industry’s undisputed resident auteur-genius-lunatic. This is the guy who brought us all the lunacy of the Metal Gear Solid series that somehow managed to merge questions of linguistic existentialism, mutually assured (nuclear) destruction, and giant robots into a cohesive narrative about the role of a soldier. I wanna see what this guy does.

The latest trailer focuses on the character Heartman, based on the likeness of Nicolas Winding Refn. Which, before we get any further, sidebar:

Refn is a writer-director, perhaps best known for the excellent movie Drive and more recently Too Old To Die Young. He’s not the sort of person you expect to provide the likeness for a video game character, but here we are.

Anyway.

Heartman. His whole deal is that every twenty-one minutes his heart stops and he dies, only to be resuscitated by an AED three minutes later. During those three minutes, he searches for his family on the “other side,” before coming back to life and resuming whatever it is he’s doing. Since most of life — aside from sleeping — can, as he puts it, fit into that twenty-one-minute window, things do go on.

Alright, let’s take a second and acknowledge how freaking silly this is. Who on earth is going to commit to a bit as ridiculous as a character who chronically dies? Someone walking around with an AED strapped to his chest and keeps coming back to life?

With that out of the way, let’s now acknowledge how ridiculously brilliant this is. Kojima is a man known for taking big ideas and running with them far past anyone with a modicum of self-awareness would think to. The latter half of Metal Gear Solid V is essentially a treatise on the connection between language and cultural identity as weaved into a narrative through a deadly virus that’s passed on through speech. Somehow, it works, and the notion of a lingua franca has never seemed quite so ominous.

In light of that, I really can’t wait to see what Kojima does with Heartman. Kojima is not a man to approach an idea like this half-heartedly or with his tongue in cheek. There’s no winking at the audience, no sheepish acknowledgment that the idea is patently ridiculous but, please, just go along with it. Nope. Heartman dies every twenty-one minutes and that’s that.

But because there’s no winking, it means that Death Stranding will be totally free to explore just the toll this has on Heartman. He can’t really accomplish much of significance in the periods he’s alive, so the question becomes if the time he spends dead is what really matters, as that’s when he can look for his family. In light of that, are those twenty-one minutes just him waiting to die? How then does he spend his time?

The trailer features Heartman’s room, a small studio stocked with books and a variety of media. Knowing how short each instance of his life is, though, how does that affect the diversions Heartman seeks out? There is some irony of this being presented in a Hideo Kojima game, a man who made a reputation out of cutscenes longer than Heartman’s lifespan, but perhaps Heartman then serves as a vehicle for Kojima to meditate on the transience of life. Writing a character who experiences life in such a different way forces Kojima to look at things differently.

Ultimately, that’s all part of the way Kojima approaches stories. Nuclear-wielding mechs and nanomachines are vehicles to really get into the nitty-gritty of thematic questions. Heartman, then, is the home for questions of existentialism, as filtered through an idea somehow simultaneously so ridiculous and brilliant. It’s simply wonderful, and just another reason why I really can’t wait to get to play Death Stranding later this year.

Recent Entries

I'm saving my more serious review for another blog. This is just the one where I give a synopsis of my thoughts.

Good movie, as a standalone. There was an interesting theme about finding balance between living for others and finding time for yourself.

Buzz was strongly out of character, and they didn't have enough of him in the movie. He really should have been there as a constant thematic foil to Bo Peep, and also to make the movie as emotionally fulfilling as possible.

Bo Peep needed a flashback, a la Jessie from Toy Story 2. That having been said, after twenty years of not seeing her, her animation is beautiful.

The story, in my opinion, takes outside of the main narrative and thematic arc of the first three movies, and I don't feel like this is part of the Toy Story proper. I would say that this would have been better served if it had been marketed as Woody's Story.

Recent Entries

So I'm looking into assembling my own Toa Krakua per John Dexter's original instructions. I had some fun compiling a BrickLink wanted list until I realized the set can't be assembled without having both dark gray and dark bluish gray parts and that's a huge pain in the neck. But it's still a childhood dream of mine to have the Toa so I'll do some experimenting until I find a color scheme that's as seamless as possible.

IIRC Toa Krakua was the first Toa of a different element besides Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Ice, Stone and Light to be introduced into the canon, right?

Recent Entries

Words can’t even begin to describe the misery she went through in the past several years of her life. Her immense medical record was just about as long as the list of doctors who were mortified at the prospect of having to navigate the murky medical waters of a woman who, by all rights, should have been dead five times over. Between her assisted living facility, the various wards of the hospital, and rehab facilities spanning across several counties, she was a threat to sap the combined medical resources of the greater Charlotte area. 77 is not an old age, but aside from her thinning, yet stubbornly black hair, her body might as well have been 97.

I don’t know, at this point, what finally did her in, but I can venture a guess that it’s something to do with the all-too-uncommon perils of someone with her comorbidities: her stage 2 kidney failure prevented her from taking the full dose of diuretics necessary to get the inevitable fluid buildup away from her heart and lungs, while her stage 3/borderline stage 4 heart failure had a hard time keeping up with the volume overload. People in her condition walk a thinner and thinner tightrope until they (or their loved ones) are forced into choosing death by kidney failure or death by heart failure.

It was getting to a point where we would have been forced into making a difficult decision on her behalf. While she never suffered from any sort of neurological conditions (other than lifelong anxiety and depression), she was so tired—especially in the final months—that she could barely lift up her head, and her generally high creatinine levels (a byproduct of kidney failure) led to many a moment when the vivid imagination of her dreams got to her in her few remaining waking hours. She would have been in no condition to weigh the awful choice which was coming her way; a nursing home would have been the next step, and that process would have been an unimaginable emotional anguish for everyone involved.

Her passing, while undeniably sad, is a weight lifted. Her condition would have killed a lesser person, and her life is a testament to a strength of willpower so strong that the rest of us would do well for ourselves in life if we had the tiniest fraction of hers.

You often hear about deaths like this being sad, but not too sad, because they’re “expected.” As cliché as that might be, I can attest to its accuracy, having seen her on her deathbed on multiple occasions within the past several years. It was hard on those occasions because we grieved her passing and got through the emotions associated with such a loss, only for her to pull out and get through another two years.

Even towards the end, she had good days, good weeks, and even good months. She found as much joy as possible in the little pleasures and comforts still available to her—watching the livestream of my graduation, hosting her bridge club for the final time—up through May. When it became clear that her body wouldn’t get back to the quality of life she once enjoyed, it shut down for good; that fight to get to the next goal, the next thing-she-was-looking-forward-to, just wasn’t there this time.

If there’s anyone who taught me perseverance in the face of adversity, it’s her, and I hope that I can follow her example for the rest of my life.

Recent Entries

A simple 1 year course in welding covering the most used process and a couple other subjects and I'm done, now to work on a resume and get my foot in the door.

Planning to start small and build up my skillset and then move on up to better positions/jobs, a far off goal could be pipeline work with my own small side shop doing request work for repairs or art people would want.

Dunno where this field will take me but I'll make sure to try to enjoy it and learn more things along the way.

Recent Entries

It's been a while since I've put together a blog post, so here's me jabbering about my stories in general. I'm finally finishing up a couple that I've been posting.

Highfly Vinesman, Deepwood Wayfinder was for the BZPower Fanfic Exchange 2018 and written for Darth Jaller. It features Tamaru, Taipu, and Kapura and it's been fun writing back about the MNOLG-era. The other is a sequel to my Kulagi's Kanoka story, A Shadow's Contrivance which features the Kanoka wielding Matoran against the Dark Hunters during the Toa and Dark Hunter war. I am actually extremely proud of this story; it expands and better uses the characters from the original, has lots of character development on multiple fronts, and features a ton of Dark Hunters, both official and custom. And I'm happy with the plot too, which has enough twists and fight sequences and chase scenes and Kanoka usages to really make it worthwhile. The whole thing started off as a minor short story idea but the expanded into this major operation. (It's also one of those stories that I'm really happy with but barely has any reviews. Oh well.)

Also found some of the round-robin stories I participated in for a contest years ago; the topics still exist but the formatting got lost so it was a whole block of text, but once I got past that they were some fun stories, and I'm kind of disappointed that we didn't finish any of them.

One story that just made my blog look like it got updated was my BZPower Blog Story set in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure story but starring BZPower members from the time. Of course, it was posted during the server downtime, back when the BZPower urls included "forum" instead of "board". Well, all the blog entries were still there (blog stuff got preserved but topics did not) but the links were all dead. I just went through and updated them, but that pushed a couple up to the front of the blog, soooo kinda made it look like I just posted a bunch of stuff here when all I was doing was updating some links. Story is still good, although most of the members have changed their names or become inactive since. (Gosh, and this was originally written when Bionicle G1 was coming to an end... and now it's been a couple of years since G2 abruptly ended. Crazy.)

Speaking of that, I also had that BZ-Koro epic that was supposed to herald in G2, and it was one where I'd have people vote on where each new chapter would go. It made some decent progress before work got the best of me and I dropped it. (I mean, that was before I finally got diagnosed with sleep apnea, so I mean I was running of fumes for years there.) Problem is there's not much of an audience left and some of the main characters... well, things happened and it didn't feel right to continue. I'm tempted to change some things around and write the conclusion I was working towards, but dunno if it would be worth it. Still, I don't know if I'm ever going to top Tekulo and Dotcom singing "A Whole New World" in the middle of a fight... I still get reminded of my parody's lyrics when I listen to the original.

I was also looking back at my story about the Slizers on Mata Nui. The original story was long; partially it was drawn out because I didn't know where I wanted to take it, so I just kept having fight scene after fight scene. Somebody originally contacted my about it and I started to revisit the plot and make plans for making it shorter but keeping to the same general story, just with less redundancy. Some things would undoubtably be lost in a rewrite, but I am very tempted because I plotted out an ending for the original but never got around to finishing it. Granted, I don't know if there'd be an audience left to be interested in it anyway.

A big thing for looking back on my older stories was this thing where I'm trying to list out all the characters I've ever used in stories before. Mostly because I've reused some character names through different stories. (Like I've had variations of Triki in four different stories, playing variations of his crazy character.) Of course, putting together the list made me look up some older stories, where I've found my older writing both impressive at times and cringe worthy at other times. Also makes me sad that there are some stories that I wrote that I no longer have records before, because I lost a bunch of stuff when my laptop was stolen and the BZP servers crashed and took a lot of other stories down. There was a fun Bionicle Christmas story I wrote staring Kapura, another small epic featuring the Voya-Nui Matoran against the Piraka, and a comedy about the Toa in an election, plus a bunch of other short stories and such.

Meanwhile, I have a handful of current stories I want to complete (two of which I've worked on for NaNoWriMo... twice each) plus a lot of other ideas I want to move forward with. But unfortunately, working full time has really cut down on my mental ability to just sit down and write write write... a professional author I will never be. Too many story ideas stuck in my head, and that says nothing of the older stories I want to redo / reboot.